TO REALLY FOUL THINGS UP REQUIRES A COMMITTEE. The Chicago Tribune (registration required; if you know how to reach me, and my railway namesake you can log in) reports on today's spacewalk being a repair of the space agency's image, as well as of the shuttle. Fortunately, the oakum picking was relatively easy, as unrehearsed space walks go. It's the corporate culture at the agency that is of interest.

Post-Columbia changes at the agency have extended to the new, $857,000 room in Houston where [deputy manager Wayne] Hale's mission management team decided to try a repair. The high-tech conference room is festooned with written reminders of how previous teams went wrong.

One poster reads, "People in groups tend to agree on courses of action which, as individuals, they know are stupid." Another one says simply, "None of us is as dumb as all of us."

I like these posters, and will keep them in mind the next time some lackwit on a committee says "consensus." And there is likely to be such an opportunity, as well as opportunities to provide early warning of academic fads.

One has to find the fun no matter what happens ... in this case, the acting dean sent an urgent email to all the departments not currently represented on a committee that approves all curriculum intended to get students their initial certification as teachers, and by virtue of my role as coordinator of the Office of Economic Education, I was asked, and unlike General Sherman, I agreed to serve. I've also made a quick pass through the minutes of assorted bodies likely to have the responsibility to change the composition of committees, and found nothing. We shall see whether new members will be given any explanation for this change, or if this will be left to those members who care to find out.